Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Are you interested in getting involved in open source development? Maybe you want to improve your skills, raise your chance of landing a job, or just get a taste of what it's like to collaborate in the open source model. However, there's always that problem: "how to get involved"? Scratching your own itch is how many projects are started, but that doesn't guarantee that you'll get to work with others. Finding an existing, active project will let you work with others, but taking that first step can be daunting. You need a place where:

You can ask questions without feeling intimidated, because you need to be able to learn and make mistakes.

There are some people who are eager to help you get started, because thrashing around on your own in an alien codebase can be such a drag.

You can work on real issues and features, not toy ones, because working on something that actually helps the project is a vital part of the experience.

What you need is a project that ticks those boxes. Mutability Detector is one of those projects. Based on the concept of the London Java Community's "Meet-A-Project", I want to invite you, potential contributor, to get involved.

What is Mutability Detector?

A Java library that analyses classes to find out if they are immutable. Using immutability is a popular technique for improving readability and robustness of code. Immutability is built into newer JVM languages like Scala and Clojure, but takes a little more effort to get it right in Java. Mutability Detector helps Java developers implement immutability correctly.

It uses git for version control, hosted on GitHub. It uses Maven for a build tool and CloudBees for continuous integration. The code has been written using test driven development and uses such libraries as ASM and Guava. Mutability Detector has various ways of being executed, but it's mostly standalone; there's no databases or web pages involved. It's intended to work from the command line, work within any and all unit testing frameworks like JUnit and TestNG, and work as a plugin within FindBugs.

If none of that means anything to you, Don't Panic, I can help explain all this stuff. If you're interested in coding in Java, and eager to learn, we can work on picking up that knowledge. Read on.

What is there to work on?

There are three issues in Mutability Detector's issue tracker on GitHub that I intend to get fixed, one way or the other. Two issues are new features that I think would help more users, thus improving popularity of the library. The third is an issue raised by an end user, that, although it has a workaround, would make using the library easier. Alongside the primary goal of getting these features implemented, and that bug fixed, I also want to increase contribution from others. Each of these issues are small enough that we can make progress without giving up our day jobs or taking a sabbatical, but not so small as to be trivial. If a potential employer asks in an interview what your involvement in this project was, you will be able to say "I had a major part in implementing Feature X", rather than, "I fixed a typo in the documentation"[0].

What's in it for me, as project owner?

To be blunt, I could implement these features myself. As the main developer, I understand the problems, and how to solve them. Even if other people write the code, I'm still likely to spend more time helping others write the code than I would just writing it myself. So why bother? Well, the most selfish reason is that I want experience of technical leadership. I have not had a technical lead role in my career yet (in my whopping 3 years of experience), and want to experience the challenges of mentoring, coaching and directing others. I also expect to learn something from everyone who gets involved, no matter their experience level. And I think it will be fun.

Also, what's the worst that could happen? Nobody responds and I implement the features myself? Big whoop, I'm no worse off. I spend some time helping people contribute and they lose interest? Ah, so what. I accept a contribution and a bug slips into the code? Not the end of the world, we're not developing heart monitors or air traffic control systems. I want open source development to be fun and interesting.

What's in it for you, as a contributor?

Like you, I have wanted to get involved in open source projects and either felt intimidated, didn't know where to begin, or didn't know how to be useful. Here I'm listing several features, all of which I want implemented. Hopefully I'm also making it clear that I am opening myself up to lots of questions, so you shouldn't feel shy about asking. There will be no Linus Torvalds-style flaming here. We may disagree, and I may criticise your code, or reject it until I'm happy to incorporate it, but I think that's fine -- that's collaboration.

If you are struggling to make the move into Java, you can learn by studying how someone else writes it. Not that I'm saying my code is perfect, it's most definitely not, but it can give you a frame of reference, and I'm happy to explain why I wrote code a certain way, or made a particular design choice.

Since I'm strict about it, any code which is eventually accepted will:

So if you don't know what those things are, you'll learn about them in relation to actual code.

If you are looking for something to put on a CV, contributing to open source can help distinguish you from other candidates. It's not just about coding, it's about the collaboration aspect of it. An employer being able to see not just how you code, but how you communicate with people, helps take the risk out of the hiring decision. Fun fact: I wrote and released the first version of Mutability Detector before leaving university; and it was one of the factors in securing a job to go to after I graduated. An interviewer at TIM Group told me he looked at my code and was impressed by the quality.

So how to get started?

Post to the mailing list and announce your interest in contributing, tell me a little about yourself. Read this blog, and try to use Mutability Detector. Try to get a feel for its purpose; run it on some of your own code to see the results. That will help you understand the features. Even just understanding what this project is for is beyond beginner-level Java.

Follow the project README on GitHub, fork, clone and build the project, and submit a super-tedious pull request (like fixing a typo, or renaming a variable). That will get you familiar with building the project, importing it into your development environment, and going through the code submission process.

From there, pick one of the features you are interested in contributing to, and begin working on it. If, at any stage of the process, you hit a bump, ask for help on the project mailing list. I don't mind how 'basic' you think the question is, if it prevents you getting involved, I'm happy to give you pointers. Stuff like "how to install Java?", or "what does this error mean?" are fine. I can't promise I will be a great teacher, but I'll try.

I look forward to hearing from you.

[0] patches which fix typos are very much welcome, they are an important contribution -- they just don't say much about you as a software developer.

2 comments:

I'm really very sorry it's taken me so long to respond to your question. See the section on getting started, particularly: "Post to the mailing list and announce your interest in contributing, tell me a little about yourself. Read this blog, and try to use Mutability Detector".